Dark Wings for Kraken

Posted on Fri Jun 11th, 2021 @ 1:09am by

Mission: The Great Council
Location: Reaper's Keep
Timeline: The Night Before the 2nd Day of the Great Council

Reaper's Keep
Nightfall

"From Tawney Four-Fingers..." Blue eyes flicked up from shadow, the odor of dank and salt flaring his nostrils. Reaper's Keep was an eyesore of a place- deliberately bleak, gray, and offensive to the eye of the pretty prancing lords of Westeros. Its stones were cold and roughly hewn in portions suggesting it was a rebuild from Danaerys' insanity which eclipsed that of her Lord Father. Here and there the stones were even blackened and smooth. If the stone was not gray or black, it was pale like dingy old bones, a shade that made up much of its exterior.

The eyes belonged to a sneer. And the sneer belonged to Erac Greyjoy. He lifted himself with a snake-like sway. He boredly dropped with a clatter a scroll. He moved, his azure eyes hovering over his sister Neia's shoulder. He sniffed at her neck with a chuckle, feeling her first tense and then move her hand for her knife. "Save it for a real fish, love," Erac cooed like a sea snake. No wonder he bore a name like the Sea Viper. He whipped to her other shoulder with his smug smile, "A real big fish... with lemon and salt."

Neia smirked only, her own shockingly blue eyes, made bluer by half a face painted in indigo woad, turning away from her little brother to what she'd spoken of. It squawked a resonant sound in the hall. Neia studied the leg of the scruffy, salty old raven. Her gaze lifted to meet the scrawny form of who had brought the bird. "Leave us, Milkeye," she said to the stringy, albinoesque runt of a boy. Milkeye nodded- his ashen, limp hair almost motionless. His one good eye peered through his dirty bangs, his milky, cataracted gaze from the other unmoving. He obliged with the tap of his fearsomely barbed and serrated pike polearm. Neia waited for the sound of the latch and the echo.

Only then did she unroll the vellum around the bird's ankle, a thin streamer with the mark of red nettles and black barbs like a cat o nine tail. "What does Four-Fingers say?" A voice from across the table asked. It belonged to the cool calm stone face that was Helja Salt-hair. Neia fingered the curl of vellum more exactly.

Her gaze lifted. "They are in position west of Seagard, in the woods of the Cape of Eagles. They'll move at our word."

Erac smirked, his mouth bowing down its corner in a pout of mockery, "Just give it now. Get the jump." Helja icily looked at him for his impudence but Erac did not shrink away. But he did sway, taking an uninvited place at the table. He leaned on it with a chuckle and a sniff.

Helja stared down her male issue with the same cold demeanor that she had looked over the funeral with. "We made an agreement with Velaryon. We move when I say we move." Helja shifted her gaze to her daughter, "Give me the dispatch from Wynch Bloodweeper." Neia leaned on the table much like her brother.

"I burned it already," Neia attested with a resigned sigh. "He says he's ready. Whalespear and Rustpole fanned out their ships' crews. At our signal from the Seabreaker our men will move out and burn Flea Bottom." She gestured at several locations around a makeshift map of Flea Bottom, tracing her finger to where they'd chosen. "While the City Guard is dealing with that, the Bloodweeper will make for the Tully Manse and burn it to the ground."

Helja nodded, "Meanwhile we fire the ships in the harbor. Destroy what we can before we pull back into the Blackwater."

"And right into battle with the Royal Fleet..." Neia said with a note of fleeting trepidation. "Will they be loyal to Stevron, or to a Tully King?"

Helja did not look up from the map, "They won't know who is King yet."

"The smoke from Flea Bottom will give us away," Neia interjected.

"Does it matter? If they aren't with us we face them in battle. We fight through and back to safety. If they are, we blockade the bay. The Martells and Tullys will be forced to return home on foot. Either way, we wound a Trout King's pride and shake his confidence. No Ironborn has ever set King's Landing on fire."

Neia raised an eyebrow at that, "And if the boy is made King? We are true? We sail peacefully?"

Helja bobbed her head once, stiffly acquiescing, "And take the island Stevron promised us."

Erac sneered, shifting like a discomfited eel sensing blood. "Bargaining with loose-assed boys and old men, Mother..." he said with a note of contempt in his voice. "It st-" He didn't finish his sentence.

With a blink and a whir of a blue-blackened blade, a forked-like dagger stabbed into the spongy driftwood of the table on either side of Erac's wrist. It was not a neat thrust- thin rivulets of blood oozed from shallow cuts on either side of his wrist. Neia pulled her fingers off the strange forked Asshai blade with a dark chuckle of delight. Then she boldly laughed, head thrown back.

"Just do your job dear Brother. Quietly," Neia instructed, her nose brushing his cheek almost like a nuzzle. She smiled and tsked when he moved his off-hand to his blade. "No, no. You do not want to do that. If you want to keep your cock." She grabbed his jewels in a fist and squeezed, remembering once it takes the same pressure as bursting a piece of fruit. She humphed softly in his ear while he fumed but relaxed his hand. "Be a good boy,' she kissed his cheek, "Women are planning," Neia breathed softly across his cheek and in a motherly way brushed his ear back behind his ear. She left the pronged blade pinning her brother to the table. When she stepped back, he grasped its hand and tried- at first failing- to pull it from the wood.

Helja Salt-Hair looked on with a mild twitch of amusement at her children and their playing.